In preparation for the Cedar Beach music and arts festival (long island, NY), I was asked by Parkside Fuel/Greenseal Weatherization to create a painting on one of their older oil tanks, from an image of their offices during a snowstorm. So, in the interest of sharing some progress work with you. Here’s how it starts.

Client asks me if I can do something, I say yes. I do it, something goes wrong, I fix it, make it work.

So when they gave me a white tank to start on, I realized two things. first, it was rusting through the paint. two, it wasnt well primed. Picked up a coat of Rustoleum primer, problem solved, materials added to list.

Paint wasnt sticking as well to that surface as I’d hoped, so had to double up on coats for even the non dense patches. Solution, I’d have to really crank into this thing to finish it for the event. Here’s some pics. (click for larger version) Oh, and I was working on location in a corner of their graveled parking lot.

In order to finish it, the last day I was there from about 7am-9pm. When I have a deadline, I do everything I can to make sure it gets finished for the client.

The next day, I arrived at the event to see the tank in daylight, Although there was one change, the sealant coat I used must have picked up some dust during the night, because there was a thin coat of white at the top area. It worked out well though as it added to the snow cloud effect. What artists like to call, a “Happy Accident”.

The client was really happy with how it turned out, people at the event stopped to look, and get information on the artist (this guy), and was a lot of fun. Also they hired me to do face painting at the event, which is normally not what I’d be doing, but the kids were great and I had a lot of fun making them look like butterflies, puppies, tigers, zombies, and various other things.

Overall, great experience, and they already mentioned they want me to do more work for them.

Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to meet and work with Kevin Reed in his studio. I had been linked of facebook (hooray social media) by a friend of mine when he was seeking artists for a set piece. I responded and sent over my link and although what he needed was different from what I usually create, he was confident in my abilities. So about a day or two later I met him and set to work. I had created a rough sketch which the client had approved, so simply started to build out my area with tape and get to work.

Some of the varied sketches:

Starting off:

Kevin had recently acquired two kittens, a brother and sister who I called Brooke and Brad, whose names were actually Brooklyn and Bradford. For the vast majority of the time I was working, they were sleeping on my bags, supplies, or in some cases, on my assistant Colleen when she came in to help me finish on the last day.

Kittens sleeping:

Unfortunately the project was on a very limited timeframe, which meant I needed to get cranking on the set in order to have it done in time for the shoot. So, over the course of what i believe was three days straight, I stayed in Kevin’s studio working constantly, with breaks here and there to stuff food in my face. (note: if you ever need to stay awake for extended lengths of time, you need to eat, your body goes into overdrive and needs the calories to keep you functional)

Kevin and his fiance Polina (now his lovely wife) were super sweet and great to work with. Both kept offering me tea and water, as well as offering conversation while I was working. All of which helped. By the end of day two I realized that I was going to need some help to push through the last of it, which is when I had Colleen show up at the studio to help move things along.

The process I was using was tracing paper drawings of the scroll-work, backed with a graphite rubbed piece of paper, and then tracing the scroll-work onto the wall, which kept everything uniform and neat. then going through with grey and silver paint to build a little depth, and some faint black and white in the appropriate spots to kick it a bit. The idea was for something intricate and simple at the same time that wouldn’t detract from the models and the evening wear.

At work:

Fortunately with Colleen’s help, and Kevin and Polina’s tea, coffee, and chocolates (oh the chocolate, soo good), we managed to pull it together. Colleen wound up there for somewhere around 24 hours herself, I was at something like 60-70 of straight working, but it came out great.

Nearly there:

I did end up coming back the next day to revise the mirror at the client’s request, they felt it was going to be a distraction the way I had tried to paint it as a patina/reflection. Wasn’t a big fix, and they were happy after, so all went well.

Only recently saw the big payoff of beautiful women posing in front of the walls which I’d created, and must say, it’s a perk of the job. Definitely looking forward to working with Kevin again in the future, as well as Colleen as she really helped me pull this off. Thanks to everyone, and here’s some samples from the shoot for your enjoyment.

It has been a very long time since I’ve done any digital work. Mostly because I really just love the feeling or working with traditional media. However, I’ve realized that it can be very helpful in planning out larger pieces by doing some quick mock ups, as well as with some practice, I’m sure I can make some really fun digital paintings.

So far I’ve been working with GIMP, which is basically a free version of Photoshop. It works fine for what I’m doing, as is pretty straight forward as a learning tool on how to get things going.

The first one I started working with recently was based on a few sketches I’d done of a prospective t-shirt design I’d like to have printed up.

Here are the rough sketches in my sketchbook.

and then I did a very light rough sketch in pencil, scanned it and started making this.

As you can see the image is still pretty roughly done. I’ve got some more work to do with the background design, and then line revision and sharpening details before I can have it color separated and sent to a printer.

The second one I’ve recently been working on is a character concept, the base idea was roughed out (again, in the sketchbooks), with an idea for the face and pose. Then scanned, and worked on. Background is still being sketched out.

While I was playing with it, I was also occasionally flipping it, and realized I currently like it facing the opposite way. Head blown up as a second layer for detail viewing at the moment. I will be sketching more like this over the next couple months, as I really want to do more concept art work, and it seems that the digital route is preferred in that field. Also, now that I have a functional tablet again, I can actually do the detail work.

Of these two drawings, the astronaut will end up being finished as a tshirt design, going to do more revisions to get a really cool look to it. And the character concept I may end up attempting as a digital painting in the future. Will see how it looks when I finish detailing it.

Tuesday of this previous week I started an illustration project for Brutal Bitches Productions, a metal music concert organizing company based out of the Bronx. Was told to do something with a sexy metal chick, surrounded by carnage. But had to do it in a way that there would be enough room for the band logos and event info to not completely block the imagery.
Send one sketch, that was rejected, so then sent this one as a thumbnail, and got an okay to work with it.

“Just make it sexy, add some decapitations, and monsters, okay?”

I think I should have no problem with that, *wicked smile*. Have I mentioned that I love what I do?

Next step was some rough sketching and then adding ballpoint linework over the pencil so I could erase and have a clean working surface, so that line art became this….

The original idea was to stick to a mostly black and white image to make it very bold, and include some splashes of color, so I started working in my shading using varying grays. Pretty much just acrylic washes of payne’s gray to build up what I wanted it to look like in a basic sense.

Then,… well it was decided that full color would be so much cooler as the band logos look pretty crazy in color and the illustration had to work with them and not be completely obscured by them. So started laying in color washes over the gray shading, and that ended up coming out along these lines.

A few more washes to close out some of the white spots and darken some spots I wanted to set back, and then the next real part was the outlines in micron on the things that were more foreground prevalent. Basically the outlines on the figure (Metal Goddess) and her hair were in black micron, which is basically like a really fine tipped marker for line art. The background buildings and figures got touched up with more ballpoint so as not to compete too much with the foreground.

The last thing I did before sending it off to BBP was to adjust the levels digitally so the dark parts were even darker and the color a little sharper. For illustration projects I generally go this route, because that way I’m not physically working everything so dark that it can’t be changed if necessary.

After sending the file on Thursday, yes Tuesday night til Thursday morning, was a quick turnaround for this piece (read: very little sleep) had to wait til today to see the fully edited version. With the colors and the logos it looks pretty sick indeed. All in all cool project with a fun conclusion. Hopefully the event is as metal as the poster. \m|_ Like BrutalBitchesOnFacebook _|m/

So, seeing as I wasn’t keeping up too much on photography for the project over the 2nd week, these two are getting grouped in together. Here’s a collection of shots of what has been added to the project over the past couple weeks.

First is a look at the walls that I carved out. Door paneling has been added (which will also have a weathered/beaten up appearance), some shading evident on this one from where I started. As well as the line layout for a broken glass effect in some windows, and the addition of some props, plans, grass stuffed into spots on the walls. More to come.

Wall 5, also with added doors, numbers for the spaces, plants, the start of a small sidewalk instal;, and a grate which will be mounted over a window soon.

That’s all for the first side, still some small detailing and such to add, but have been working on second side more so these couple weeks.

Here’s the stone basing and texture being added to the bank building. (Note: all of these are actually playable buildings, for example, the bank has an inside that resembles an office building, with computers, desks, files cabinets, the works)

More of the bank, with my bags of foam (which will very likely be used to create rubble effects), the soon to be clothing store in the back, and a sneak peek at what will in the near future, look like a big, mean, tank.

This one is going to be the clothing store exterior. As you can see here, the broken glass effect comes out pretty friggin cool looking after some work.

Going to skip the restaurant building for now, as that is still waiting on some props before I can advance work with it. So, here’s the toy store/video store.

To give you a brief idea of what I started with. Gray based walls, which I then taped out my windows and such, basecoated a white fill for the glass, and then,…… a little work, and

presto chango, broken windows, and some beaten up building. Obviously these guys all still need detailing (to sharpen the battle damage, and to add the window fill) as well as the addition of props. window frames, molding, benches and other sidewalk shopping items. Will be pretty sweet when done.

The last wall on this side, which is the grocery store, was pretty fun because I got to play around and make a stencil to create the illusion of an AC unit, all out of tape (which I’ve been doing), buuuuut, this time I was able to build the tape stencil in such a way, that I could actually transfer it to the other side after painting. Which was pretty cool. Here’s a brief rundown on that.

Tape Layouts, and windows primed above AC unit.

Gettin down n dirty, as usual. (this is just so you get an idea how big these spaces are)

After a base of black, and some drybrushed gray lines.

Looks interesting to say the least.

After peeling the tape, and doing the windows. Still needs some highlighting, but you get where it’s going.

Tape after transfer, which was a bit of a pain in the butt to transfer in one piece, but it worked, so saved me a lot more time than a full stencil reapplication.

That’s the update for now. Project has been extended by the integration of different prop work and such. So hoping to have it done within another week, maybe week and a half. Check back for updates.

Current big project in the works is doing the detail painting (and some construction work,… aka demolition) at the soon to be fully operational iCombat facility in Long Island City. Will apply all the proper links to the company once we’re fully running.

What I’m doing is 1. Chiseling out the walls of foam to create shapes and buildings. 2. Painting said shapes and buildings to look like buildings. This is just the basic part of it, we are also bringing in props and 3D elements to add to the buildings and make them even more realistic. Basically this place is going to look like a street scene from any war movie/video game you’ve experienced, but you can play on it. Awesome? Yes.

So, here’s a peek at what I had to start with after they started building up some of the scene for me to work on.

Here we have my good friend Eric helping me out to chisel out the shapes. Very physically demanding work, but damn is it also satisfying to whack the crap out of that stuff.

After chiseling out the shapes, as well as some battle scarring on the walls, it was time to fill in some of the space for detailing and background appearance. So here I am painting in filler. The respirator is because I was switching back and forth from brush to spray paints.

Wall 4 of 5, chiseled and blacked in, ready for some more paint to bring out details and texture it up.

Here’s wall 2 of 5 pretty much done as far as the base painting goes, waiting on a door to be installed, and props added. As far as the black and white scorpions in the door frame, those were an experiment with spray painting stencils, they came out pretty spot on, so I’ll be having some serious fun with that approach in the near future.

That’s all I’ve got for now, Week 2 was mostly just me working and forgetting to snap shots, but will update with images of the current look as soon as can.

Did another small mural down in Broad Channel, NY. However, seeing as I’ve been asked to do an extension of it by the business owner (and the pics I got of the finished part was at night and not the best of quality shots), I’ve decided to hold off on posting the images just yet. But should be back there in another week or two.

Have a pretty cool drawing in the works or which I’ll show a little teaser here.

Cybernetic things are always a pleasure to draw

Some of you may recognize this character as the girl in the “TechChristie” sketch I posted in November. Decided to see what I could do with some blue pencil and a nice surface and this is where that started heading. Still a lot of surface to cover, and then I’ve got to decide what I’m doing with the drawing, be it leaving it as is, adding paint, or scanning and coloring digitally. That last one is happening anyway as I’ve been playing with programs a little in my spare time when I do have it. Will see, so be sure to check back for this one.and should have a finished painting or two up by the end of the week.

There are a few other projects that are in the works that I’m really excited about, but wont go into detail on those yet. Just looking forward to seeing how things progress.